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Interesting. I am glad that there is some mention of real issues like the economy and the job market. It is such a long wait! America needs to get on with moving away from Bush's politics. What a mess that man has made.

Yamaka said, "The net effect is Sen Obama is leading Sen Clinton barely by 18 delegates."

??

Obama leads in pledged delegates by 163 according to The Green Papers. Clinton leads Obama by 22 to 25 superdelegates, depending on which site you go to.

163 minus 25 (worst case for Obama) equals

Drum roll

139 delegates.

Now, yamaka, please explain how you came up with 18.

Oh, and until the Michigan and Florida situations get sorted out, no one knows how they will be included, so you cannot include them. Including them is making an ASSumption. Of course, if you want to assume - well, you should know what comes next.

As Mike already pointed out, those are *not* the most relevant numbers. We don't know how MI and FL will get counted. My guess is that they get counted proportional to the election results, but with 50% delegates.

Also, you're assuming that the 55 uncommitted MI delegates split evenly. That's just not going to happen. I doubt the Obama camp will accept any proposal that doesn't give them all 55 of those delegates.

At that point, the worst case for Obama has him ahead by 18+55=73 delegates. Clinton is not going to gain 73 delegates on Tuesday.

Me: I doubt the Obama camp will accept any proposal that doesn't give them all 55 of those delegates.

J: But they weren't votes for Obama, so it's his (and his campaign's) own fault for taking his name off the ballot...

Me: 1. As even Clinton has pointed out, Obama's campaign was working hard to get people to vote "uncommitted." (She made that argument as a reason the MI vote should be considered valid.)

2. Clinton's name *was* on the ballot. *None* of those uncommitted delegates should go to her. If they don't go to Obama, what do we do with them?

3. If we're going to use the "it's their fault that they're in this mess, because they didn't consider the consequences" argument, why don't we just say the same thing about MI and FL for jumping the schedule? They were warned that their primaries wouldn't count.

(Note: I'm not proposing that we should use that argument. I'm just saying that it's a double standard to use that argument against Obama and not use it against the states.)